


Glint, glimmer, glitter

by WahlBuilder



Series: 30 days of rarepairs [6]
Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors
Genre: Glitter, Other, Shapeshifting, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 12:45:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13167195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Koyne brings the Garantine with them for a mission, and everyone has fun.





	1. Chapter 1

The Garantine was nervous. He didn’t get nervous often, but nonetheless it meant that someone was going to die. A lot of someones. To be entirely thruthful, being awake meant that someones were going to die if the one awake was the Garantine, regardless of whether the Garantine was nervous or not. Lately, being awake didn’t always entail someone’s death, but that was just an aside—a bonues of the Garantine’s current arrangement as Koyne’s partner—in many senses of the word.

The Garantine’s muscles spasmed from the effort to stay still—not completely still, of course, that usually unnerved people, but enough to make it look natural and relaxed.

Assassins didn’t fidget. They moved with purpose—to maim, to execute.

Currently, the Garantine was trying really hard not to execute himself. He felt a presence behind and did not turn around and tore the head of the man’s neck.

‘Wives sure take their time, eh, sir?’ the voice suggested shared knowledge.

The Garantine turned slowly—slower than he would have done it in any other situation, that is—and managed a sociable smile he had spent days repeating after Koyne. ‘They do, lad.’

The man’s face twisted in a strange expression that made the Garantine panic and flex his fingers, feeling the give of the mechanism on a wide ring adorning one of his fingers, and the slight nudge of the blade hidden on his wrist. But then the man—their driver-to-be—smiled and nodded.

The Garantine sighed very slightly.

It was a mission, aye, and just like with any mission given by the Temples it was supposed to be done solo—but Koyne demanded his partner for it. When the Garantine had studied the mission parameters at first he hadn't understood why Koyne requested his assistance. It was just Koyne’s kind of mission: subterfuge, disguise, hidden games.

A complete opposite of what was usually required from the Garantine.

But then Koyne had told him the plan—and that’s how the Garantine ended up waiting at the foot of a grand hotel staircase that was twisting slightly to the right and obscuring the view of the upper floors. Wearing a black and white suit—not a mission suit, but a fancy jacket and fancy pants that chafed and scraped against the Garantine’s body in irritating ways. Tight-fitting pants were ‘in fashion on this planet, Gar, and I won’t hear any objections’. The Garantine felt... exposed. His usual bodyglove—that he was currently wearing under the suit, minus a few bits, the only concession from Koyne—was even more form-fitting, but it didn’t hinder his movement and it wasn’t for show. The helmet-mask, the skull was for show as much as practical, but on the whole it was his working suit.

But this was simply torture.

Still, Koyne said it looked good on him, so the Garantine’s hands were tied. He would have much preferred at least a skirt, but Koyne said men of the upper class didn’t usually wear skirts in this city. Nor did they wear high heels. The Garantine wrote it down in his mental list of everything that was wrong with this planet and this city’s culture in particular.

Koyne, though, had suggested it would be a good opportunity to test their skills. For example, the skill of hiding as much weaponry on one’s body as possible under a tight-fitting suit. The Garantine suspected he was being expertly manipulated.

The driver’s gaze moved over the Garantine’s shoulder and his face shifted again into a stony mask of amazement. The Garantine turned around.

Well, he could understand the driver’s amazement all right.

It was worth the wait, aye. The dress was volumes of cloud matter—the clouds you’d see on a green and blue reserve world, not the rusty things of chemical mills or mine worlds, thank you. The fabric was thin and nearly transparent, but volumes and layers of it created an effect of opaqueness with only a hint of the silhouette behind all that cloudy matter. Drops of crystals were sewn onto the white-grey fabric, glittering like drops of rain. Edges of the layers were dipped into blue crystals, glinting like lightnings when Koyne moved—no, _flowed_ down the stairs.

Not glittery enough, in the Garantine’s opinion, but still beautiful.

Koyne themself, however, made the Garantine frown. They were beautiful, too, aye—or rather, their current mask was beautiful, perhaps sculpted to abide by the city’s standards of beauty. Dark skin with many tiny blue scales, reflecting light, accentuating the line of cheekbones and brow. Eyelashes, long and golden and heavy, making their gaze a languid trap of promise. The line of narrow shoulders, open and rising above the clouds of the dress like mountain slopes smoothed by rains of many centuries, with glittering scales, blue, too, on top like snow under the sunlight.

Long and powerful arms encased in tight, long gloves made of the same wispy material that the dress was made from.

All in all, very pretty. And very not Koyne.

Everything was not Koyne, even the sweet smile that the Callidus gave him when they reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘My, dear love,’ the shapeshifter purred—even the voice was wrong, warm and sweet and with velvety cadences. ‘I hope I haven’t made you wait for too long.’

The Garantine straightened up and didn’t say anything, because he didn’t want to blow the mission right away. He only offered his arm to his ‘wife’ and nodded to the driver.

 

The mission wasn’t supposed to be anything extraordinary. Oh, a few times Koyne had told him about extraordinary: missions—without details, of course, or rather, only details that couldn’t tell the Garantine anything substantial to identify them without digging for information—that made his eyebrows rise and Koyne laugh at the expression on his face, in their strange, glittering way that was their true laughter.

The Garantine’s missions were always straightforward, simple in comparison. His strength lay in overpowering, intimidation, killing—up close and personal. Although the Eversors were considered the blunt force of the Officio Assassinorum, they were not stupid. It was just better if everyone else thought they were.

But Koyne’s missions were... Well, what the Garantine knew about them made him want to shadow Koyne all the time or lock them up in the dormitory with cakes and sweetmeats to occupy them. For an hour or two.

Before Koyne, the Garantine had known fear: to exterminate it completely from an Assassin’s psyche, he surmised, would be stupid, for it would mean that the Assassin would be unable to analyse the situation properly. Even in the case of the ‘simple’ and fast missions that Eversors had.

When Koyne had waltzed into the Garantine’s life, the Garantine had learned the meaning of terror. Breath-stealing, heart-clutching, anger-filling state of fear for someone else.

There was merit to the policy of solo missions. There were merits to having a partner, too, despite all that.

The new mission that Koyne had requested the Garantine’s assistance was, in comparison, fairly straightforward—for a Callidus mission, of course. Get information on a potential mark. Eliminate the mark if necessary.

Koyne had decided they absolutely ought to gather information on the mark, a local crime lord/aristo, during a charity ball. Or maybe there was no charity involved. Maybe it was even called something like souiree or buffet, or banquet. Or something like that. The important things were that there would be a lot of people, some food—and dancing. And Koyne—who didn’t, apparently, want to simplify the mission and pose as one of the servants—required a partner, a date. When the Garantine had asked why Koyne wouldn’t mesmerise some local aristo and arrive with them, Koyne had given him The Glare that made the Garantine shudder.

When the Garantine had suggested he would wear a dress instead of Koyne, Koyne had given him another glare, more amused than anything this time.

Thus, the Garantine had been glared into compliance.

And now, with the weight—the right weight but wrong shape—of pseudo-Koyne on his arm, with soles of his shoes too thick for him to feel the pavement, he escorted his ‘lady wife’ into the flier, then settled himself, and the flier took off.

 

The Garantine head was more clear without the presence of stimulants. Or rather, slightly clouded, not overly, sharply clear when the stimulants would make his blood boil and his field of vision turn into a tunnel, and the urge to kill unbearable.

Their arrangement—in the world outside the Officio it could have been called marriage, as one of the infocites had told him, giggling, when the Garantine had gone to the library to fetch information on exclusive kinship ceremony customs,—was allowed by the Temples as an experiment. Less time spent in stasis, less stimulants and more co-ops. Unthinkable. But the Assassins as a whole were made to be flexible, adaptive—and who was better at this than a Callidus? And Koyne was the best Callidus.

The seat of the flier swallowed him, and he found Koyne’s hand and squeezed it. There was an answering squeeze.

 _+Are you all right?+_ popped up on his retinal display.

The Garantine gave another squeeze and closed his eyes which allowed him to block everything but this form of communication with Koyne. The flier was vibrating slightly, and it lulled the Garantine into meditative state.

 

The Palace was grand. A small ping woke the Garantine right away, and he looked down from the side of the flier, and the wall became half transparent right away, allowing the view.

The Palace was a sea of lights in the surrounding darkness of the city. The mission briefing had said the area around it would be darkened to allow the Palace to stand out—and them to slide away if need be. The security set was standard, too: guards, alarms, pressure and motion detectors in the closed areas, yadda-yadda. The Garantine didn’t really care. He was... an accessory this night, and a third/fourth/fifth option or maybe even lower down the list if if things got heated.

He would try to enjoy this: not the dancing, but mostly watching Koyne work. Trying not to glow with pride too much.

The flier touched down without a jerk on the lawn in front of the palace, and the Garantine walked out then turned to help the pseudo-Koyne out, too, and earned himself a smirk—not the graceful smile of Koyne’s persona, but Koyne’s genuine mischievous smirk.

_+You won’t be bored, I promise you.+_

The Garantine closed his eyes briefly, feeling the hold on his arm tighten, then turned and walked with his date to the smartly dressed guard and held up his wrist for the scan of temporal tattoo-invitation.

Suddenly, the night was going to become a lot better.


	2. Chapter 2

It didn’t get better. Although it depended on who you asked. Judging by Koyne’s smirks and the glints of the cloudy dress in the half-lit garden—‘the intimate, romantic twilight’—the Garantine’s partner was having fun.

_+Aren’t you enjoying the night, love?+_

The Garantine grumbled and blinked the message away. He wasn’t geared with subvocalisation system this night, so his grumbling was mostly for his own sake—but then another message popped up.

_+:)+_

The Garantine stared at it for a few seconds, waiting for the rest of the message. There was no keyboard for Koyne to us, their communication system was turning their subvocalisation into texts, but maybe the Callidus was hit with something and the system glitched?

_+It means a smile if you look at it sideways.+_

The Garantine cocked his head to the side—but realised it didn’t quite work with the retinal display, so he blinked those messages away, too, and listened.

They had cut off the security grid in the garden from the main grid of the palace, and messed it into ruins, but they hadn’t turned off the whole of illumination, and were now playing cat and mouse—or rather, catch-an-assassin-and-get-dead—in the labyrinth of hedges. With Koyne _still_ wearing the damned dress that glittered and practically _glowed_ in the half-darkness.

 

When Koyne had eliminated the mark—luring the aristo onto a balcony, really, people were _stupid_ and so easy—they tipped the body right over the banisters onto the steps floors below—before the Garantine had caught up and asked what in the name of the Emperor’s tits they were doing (not that he knew the name of the Emperor’s tits).

In reply, Koyne had jumped onto the banister—artistically arranged vines and all—and curtsied low. Shouts had been already rolling up from the steps, and the Garantine had been staring at his partner like a fool.

Then he had grabbed Koyne’s hand, pulled them off the banister, and set to running.

 

Now the Garantine was pressing himself to the cold stone of a fountain, the mist of watering showering on him and making his face damp. There were good things in all this mess, too: he got rid of the damn suit—leaving the bodyglove on, of course,—and he took Koyne’s heels and put them on. Much better. Not enough glitter, though.

There was a thin sound like breaking pottery, followed by Koyne’s laughter and a few groans.

_+I’ll send the bill for the dress to the palace. They burned a hole in the skirts, bastards.+_

The Garantine rolled his eyes, then jumped to his feet, hit an unsuspecting guard into unconsciousness, and lowered by the fountain.

They were dancing progressively to the edge of the labyrinth and the darkness of the streets, but the Garantine didn’t mind waiting. Let Koyne have their fun. The ball was not much fun, with them having to maintain their disguise, with the Garantine being too alert to relax and enjoy dances. He had had to refuse a few invitations to dance, too, telling with a strained smile that his ‘wife’ was very jealous.

The Garantine pushes and hacked his way through the hedges to the wall proper, snorted at the sizzling shields that looked like oil spilled onto water. The wall itself was barely the Garantine’s height. Never rely on only one type of protection.

He leaned on the wall, tapping his foot on the ground. The heels were dirty now, the shine completely gone. He wondered whether Koyne had planned all this from the start, right down to the size of the high heels that fit the Garantine perfectly.

There was another groan and a popping sound, and the Garantine looked up to see a strange glittery cloud some distance away. Then rustling of the hedges made him prepare his knives, but only Koyne rushed through and into the Garantine’s arms. They lost the dress somewhere, left only in their chameleon bodyglove, small and ‘blank’ again. Themself. Perfect.

The Garantine held them as they shook—with laughter. There was a shine to the bodyglove and their colourless hair and their forehead. The Garantine carded his fingers through Koyne’s hair, and his fingers came off dusted with sparkles.

‘Glitter,’ he said flatly. ‘You made a glitter bomb.’

Koyne’s laughter finally became audible, then dissolves into snorts. ‘Yes!’ Then the Callidus freed themself from his embrace, run to the wall and onto it. ‘Come on, let’s go, Gar!’ And they disappeared through the failed shield and into the darkness on the other side of the wall.

The Garantine hastened after them, grumbling under his breath.

At least there was enough glitter now.


End file.
